


(we are the) New Americana

by Idday



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Olympics, Road Trips, Team USA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 03:19:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10208330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idday/pseuds/Idday
Summary: They’re never going to be media darlings, the two of them, never going to be good Canadian boys.Not the scruffy blue-collar boy from just too far north of Boston, not the half-Mexican kid from too close to the wrong border.But they have chips on their shoulders the size of the Grand Canyon, and that means something, too....(Jack dreams his hockey in red-white-and-blue, always has, and Jack likes his boys with rough edges.That’s the goddamn American way.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Please let this be your warning if you are/know anybody mentioned here... neither of us wants you to read this.
> 
> Some drug (weed) use and underage drinking. idk man they're millionaire teenage hockey players. I think that's all for warnings--plz let me know if I should tag anything else.

The roster is published in July, after the holiday. He reads it alone his old room, twice to make sure it’s right.

It wouldn’t have been a kick if he wasn’t named, not this early. The fact that he was makes something sting behind his eyes.

The phone rings, and it could be one of a hundred people, but he’s somehow not surprised when it’s Auston.

“Dude,” he says, when he picks up the phone.

“The fucking Olympics, man,” Auston says back, and there’s something like the sheer terror that’s creeping its way through Jack’s system in his voice, and no small amount of elation, too.

There’s nothing more to say. They stay on the line a little longer, silent.

“You should come out,” Auston says finally, and Jack looks at the posters hanging over his bed, the grungy flag in the corner from a parade he went to back in grade school.

“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, okay.”

…

Jack dreams his hockey in red-white-and-blue, always has.

It’s the fresh color of the ice, of the center dot, of the crease. The crimson of BU’s jersey and the navy of Buffalo’s.

The stars behind his eyes when he takes a hard hit, bruises blooming dark, the stripes of fresh blood on new ice, more beautiful than anything else he’s seen.

…

It’s August in Arizona, and the heat steals the breath from Jack’s lungs. Auston seems unbothered, takes Jack’s bag and leads him across the parking lot. The asphalt is tacky under Jack’s shoes, elastic and gummy from the sun.

Jack ducks into the sanctuary of the air conditioned car before he gives Auston a half hug. “I still can’t fucking believe it,” he says.

Auston grins in the way he only does when he’s not being watched. “Believe it.”

“Do you believe?” Jack snipes back, half a joke, doesn’t finish the sentence. The smile falls away from Auston’s face, and Jack knows how he feels, catapults himself back into anxiety in a second.

They make small talk about the weather, Jack’s flight, their older sisters. Nothing else.

…

It’s all fun and games until someone brings up the Miracle on fucking Ice.

…

Auston’s mom feeds them well, doesn’t bat an eye when Jack has fourths. He’s never been to their house in Arizona, but he’s met Auston’s family before. They’re good at not making him feel like a guest.

Jack has ten days and no plans. They’ll train, probably. Party, maybe.

Mostly, it’s whatever version of a vacation he gets.

Auston stretches like a cat in the sun, golden and thicker than Jack’s ever seen him. The way he slumps into the lawn chair, turning his face towards the sunset, it’s like he’s absorbing all the warmth he can, stockpiling it for later in the season.

There’s an honest to god cactus in the yard. Jack can’t imagine a place farther from the ice.

Jack’s sweating a little just sitting, sunglasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. It’s evening, and the temperature is barely dropping off, dipping below the triple-digit mark.

Auston sighs. Jack’s never seen him look so settled.

…

They were never the closest, in Michigan. Jack was friends with all the guys, more or less, but Auston was always more towards the less.

They only overlapped a year, anyway.

But it became pretty clear, towards the end, that it was going to be the two of them down the road, supporting franchises and wearing the flag and being the names. And there was something in that, something not necessarily friendly, but something… kindred.

…

They take a road trip. They don’t mean to, but Jack tells him that he wants to see the Grand Canyon and Auston frowns, tells him it’s farther than it seems, and Ema tsks at them, tells them to take the car and make a trip of it.

She’s always been more invested in them having normal lives, normal experiences, than they are. All their parents have been.

Jack’s still mostly packed, just has to throw his duffle in the back of the truck. Auston grabs a few shirts, some bottled water.

There’s no occasion to it when they pull away. Auston leaves the radio on the same station even when it gets a little staticky as they get farther from town, and they don’t talk, really.

Jack’s used to filling silence, and it makes him a little uncomfortable, at first, but it’s mostly okay. Auston’s always been a good person to be quiet with.

…

It is farther than it seems. Jack forgets, or maybe has never really known, how far away everything is out west, the vastness of it all. For him, going to hockey practice meant driving to the next state over, an easy trip.

They drive for two hours, three, and it feels like they could drive for hours longer before the landscape would change, an optical illusion of the dry terrain.

They switch at a gas station, buy cold sodas that Jack holds to his neck with one hand while he steers with the other, nothing to it on the long, flat highway.

Auston looks out the window the whole time Jack drives. Jack wonders if he sees something that Jack doesn’t in the distant mountains, the way the sky purples as the sun starts to dip, or if he’s imagining the nostalgic turn of Auston’s lips.

They stop for dinner, decide to stay the night. It’s almost dark, and Auston’s adamant that Jack sees the canyon in the daylight for the first time, and Jack’s not in a position to argue, really.

He pays for the room, and it’s nice enough, cheap enough, too, for a tourist trap. It could be three years ago, the way that Auston moves around the room, brushes his teeth and hums a little when he washes his face. Not a thing has changed since when they used to do this up in Ann Arbor.

Auston must be feeling something of the same way, because he smiles. “Pretty weird, huh?” He asks, and Jack doesn’t ask for clarification, just shrugs and then nods.

They do fall asleep in their own beds, which they didn’t always used to do.

…

They didn’t grow up like Connor McDavid, the two of them.

Nobody told them they were going first in the draft in elementary school. Nobody made them exceptional before puberty. Nobody told them they could make it before they could drive.

It was later, for them. They made it to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen before anybody ever told them.

It makes a difference, Jack thinks. He’s just not sure how much of one.

…

They wake later than they would admit to their mothers, have hotel coffee and eggs and pretty much clear out what’s left of the continental breakfast. Jack doesn’t know where they’re going, but he knows they’re not staying the night, so they pack up the car again, and Auston drives.

Auston lets him approach the rim of the canyon alone, look around and take it in.

It steals his breath like a fresh sheet of ice.

The metal of the railing is already so hot it burns, but Jack leans into it regardless, looks down and down and down. There’s water down there, supposedly.

When Auston ambles up, he leans his shoulder into Jack’s. He doesn’t chirp him for whatever look must be on his face.

It’s like seeing the ocean, the knowledge that there’s something vast and fathomless and concrete, something that could swallow him whole.

…

In the parking lot, a little girl recognizes Auston, then sees Jack and puts the pieces together, eyes wide.

Jack doesn’t mind it with little kids, so much, but it’s as strange as ever to be recognized, even more so here, where even the thought of ice melts out of Jack’s head before it has the chance to crystalize.

There’s something jolting about it, as sweet as she is, and when Auston turns the ignition Jack suddenly can’t stand the thought of turning around, going back to the gym or the rink or anywhere but away.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says, and Auson hums.

“Where?”

Jack pulls out his phone. West is Vegas, East is Santa Fe. South is Phoenix.

“North,” he says.

…

They roll through little towns with one stoplight, places where people still hang flags on their front porches. They stay off the highway, drive the kind of roads where people wave when they pass, just one finger off the steering wheel.

There’s something less immediate feeling about suiting up for the USA. Less real than wearing a school’s jersey, even a city’s.

Something more important.

…

North means Utah, another place that Jack’s never been. He’s travelled, but mostly for hockey. Something about the sheer size of the country slips right out of his mind, too big to comprehend, and when he’s in California, back east, up in Canada he sometimes forgets about all the pieces in the middle.

They stop for the night again, some little town where they’re strangers and are greeted like friends. Auston has to call his family so they don’t think Jack kidnapped him, or something, and Jack makes friends with the receptionist at a hotel that’s really somebody’s guest house.

“You gotta see Moab,” she tells him, her accent verging on a drawl, more country than Southern. He feels his own coming through when he answers, removed from the cameras and relaxing into anonymity. He hasn’t heard it in his own voice in a while.

Auston cracks the window and sleeps shirtless, hair in his eyes.

Jack’s lucky to sleep at all.

…

Michigan took things from them, from all of them. Time with their families, a chance at a normal adolescence. Chipped away at Jack’s accent and at Auston’s roots, molded them into a pair of skates with three letters on their chest.

Sacrifice, that was the word they used.

Sacrifice your body, your time, your future. And earn… a chance.

Not a guarantee, not a probability.

But a chance.

Jack hadn’t even thought twice before he’d signed on the dotted line.

And it gave them things in the end, too, of course. Inches and pounds and perspective. Skill and grit and work ethic.

And it gave them each other, which, at the end of the line, suddenly feels the most important.

…

They do meander through Moab, snap pictures for their families, one of Auston shirtless in a bandana for Instagram, another badly angled selfie that Jack gleefully posts anyway.

Jack half wonders what would happen if they just went forever, hit Idaho and Montana and then turned left or right or maybe kept going, into Canada.

They don’t keep going. They see signs for Denver, and Auston pulls back onto the highway, drives them into Colorado.

They might get recognized more here, a hockey market and a bigger city. They don’t at the dispensary, thank God, because the weed is legal in the state but they’re shy of twenty-one, Jack by a few months, Auston almost a full year younger.

Jack doesn’t mind, likes the edge of it, the breathless moment when the clerk looks at his ID before he hands it back. It hasn’t failed him yet. Auston carries himself in a way that means people hardly ask for his at all.

It’s easy for them to stay just on this side of trouble. Always has been.    

…

They smoke up before they go out; find a bar that’s nearly a club.

Auston inevitably finds a girl to chat up and so Jack makes half a conversation with her friend before escaping to the bar.

Surprisingly, when Jack makes to leave, Auston shrugs and stands, doesn’t even look back.

They walk back much too close together.

It’s not new, when they find each other in the dark of the hotel room, lips meeting when Auston pushes him against the wall.

Jack used to do this more, in Ann Arbor. Not always with Auston, but enough. He had to be more careful at BU, in Buffalo, when people started to recognize him, but it was always so easy in Michigan, to find a teammate who believed a mouth was a mouth or a drunk college kid who didn’t ask questions.

They fall into it, buzzed and familiar. They’ve never done this sober.

When Jack pushes Auston onto the bed, shirtless and stumbling, Auston laughs, just once. Jack’s palm catches on the cross Auston wears around his neck; the edges bite in to his flesh, and Jack laughs too, and likes it.

It’s quick and efficient, just their hands. They’re going to pretend like this didn’t happen in the morning, and Jack’s going to pretend that he doesn’t care. Consoles himself that he’ll still have the mark of Auston’s mouth, no matter how much Auston’s going to want to pretend otherwise.

“Fuck, Jack,” Auston says when he comes, and that will be enough.

…

They take the other way back, through New Mexico, stop in Albuquerque for the night.

They sign autographs again, a little boy who asks, “Are you going to win?”

Jack glances over his head, catches Auston’s eye and bites his lip. “We’re going to try,” he promises, and something in his chest fractures.

“It’s like a tour of the people we’re going to disappoint,” Jack says, back at the hotel, and throws a shoe at the wall.

Auston’s rolling up the last of the weed they have to smoke before they see his parents again, big fingers nimble. “Don’t say that,” he says, and frowns, but he puts the joint to Jack’s lips first, lights it for him and sucks the smoke right out of his mouth.

He lets Jack blow him, which he doesn’t always. Jack can’t complain.

…

They’ve both lost with a flag on their shoulder and a letter on their chest. They have other things in common, too, but that may be the most important one.

…

When they pull back into the driveway, Jack asks him, “Is this your home?”

Jack asks because he’s curious, because he’s stupid. Because he wants to know he’s not alone when he thinks that he doesn’t really have one anymore.

North Chelmsford and Ann Arbor and Boston and Buffalo, twenty-nine cities on the road. He doesn’t know where he belongs.

“This isn’t the house I grew up in,” Auston says slowly, and he’s just as nomadic, in his way. Jack doesn’t know what he’ll do, if Auston says that he belongs to Toronto, now. It won’t feel good, probably.

“Yeah, I know,” Jack says, because he does. It’s not an answer, but it’s… something.

Ema comes out the front door, waves at them. There’s a bruise under Auston’s ear that Jack put there last night, or maybe the night before.

But that’s okay. They’ll all pretend like they don’t see it.

…

They’re never going to be like Connor or like Mitch, the two of them, never going to be media darlings, never going to be good Canadian boys.

Not the scruffy blue-collar boy from just too far north of Boston, not the half-Mexican kid from too close to the wrong border.

But they have chips on their shoulders the size of the Grand Canyon, and that means something, too.

…

When Jack flies out, it feels more like he’s leaving something behind than it does like he’s returning somewhere.

Auston wears a ball cap to the airport, low over his eyes. On the drive, Jack looks at the bare cap of his knee, his knuckles on the gear shift even though the car’s an automatic. The way he drapes a wrist over the steering wheel in the near-stopped traffic, elbow against the glass of the window.

Then he looks out his window.

Auston isn’t an especially emotive person, and Jack doesn’t expect him to be. He knows better.

He gets a hug, a second too long. A wave over Auston’s shoulder when he leaves.

It’s enough.

…

Jack avoids perfect with a ten-foot pole, because perfect is a little too close to boring for his comfort.

Nobody’s ever called him boring. They’ve called him other things, some that he’s seen, some that he’s sure he hasn’t. Never boring.

Certainly never perfect.

He’s the kind of kid who gets too drunk and chugs a beer on Snapchat. He’s the kind of kid who can’t summon up a fuck to give about the boy over the border.

Hell, he’s the kind of kid who fucks his teammates and forgets that kids like him aren’t supposed to care.

He’s a lot of things. He’s just not perfect.

…

Mitch Marner waves at him the first time they play, after the game, when Jack’s waiting in the hall for Auston.

Jack waves back, and hopes that this doesn’t mean that Mitch is invited to dinner.

He’s not invited. They go somewhere Jack’s never heard of, hide in the back booth and bump knees under the table. They don’t talk about February or the game they just played.

They do talk about the Grand Canyon.

…

Auston fronts better than Jack does, but even he doesn’t quite have the quiet Canadian act down pat.

There’s still a part of him that they haven’t smoothed away, and Jack likes that more than he can express, likes even more than he might be one of the only ones who knows it, now.

But he does know, the depth of his pupils when he gets high, the shape of his mouth on Jack’s neck. The wild look in his eye when they’re about to do something stupid, 2 AM in a foreign country.

Jack likes his boys with rough edges.

That’s the goddamn American way.

…

They go to Korea. It’s… everything. Strange and jarring and exhilarating, fucking terrifying.

They’re not roommates; management trying to expose them to veteran leadership, probably. Jack wishes that they were.

The older guys try to give them advice, tell them to enjoy the experience and focus on the game instead of the pressure.

It’s a nice thought, and all, except that it’s very tacit that nobody actually thinks they’ll win. Jack really hopes he never becomes quite this resigned to second place, but he’s already got a head start.

Going second is… well. It’s second nature, now.

…

People focus on Auston mostly, and that’s okay. Jack might prefer that, and besides, Auston’s got the hair, the smile, the _story._

He’s also got Jack’s back on the ice. Jack would rather have that than a headline.

…

Connor McDavid’s across the cafeteria in a regulation hoodie that’s bright red enough to notice.

He’s the only one on his team that’s their age. That probably says less about Jack and Auston’s talent, and more about how stacked Team Canada is.

Jack’s wearing a regulation hoodie, too, but his is navy blue and says ‘Matthews’ on the back. He grabbed it earlier, half an accident.

Connor waves at them. There’s something fearful in his posture, in his face, or maybe that’s just how he always looks. Jack forgets.

There’s a different kind of pressure, probably, when you’re expected to win instead of expected to lose. Jack spends half a second trying to feel for him, and fails. Nods at him anyway.

All things considered, he’d take the winning record.

…

It’s entirely possible that 1980 was a fortunate series of events, a fluke in hockey history, a… well. A miracle.

It’s also possible that the 1980 team sold their souls for that win, in exchange for the next half century of US losses. That was always the story in Ann Arbor.

Jack’s not saying he believes it, necessarily. He’s just saying that he’s from Boston. He knows a thing or two about team curses.

…

Auston knocks on his door the night before their first real game, falls onto the mattress beside him.

Their hands touch, catch, but they’re not holding hands, really. That would be…

They’re something closer than friends. Everything they’ve done together, everything they understand… it’s something more. Not quite lovers, not quite brothers.

They’re teammates.

That’s all. That’s everything.

They sleep like that, side by side, fingers twined, heads tipped together.

…

USA Hockey is do or die.

Some days, Jack feels a little closer to the second option.

…

Their stalls are together, and Auston’s routine is familiar enough to lull Jack into a false sense of calm. If he only looks at the way Auston puts his head in his hands, thinking, or maybe praying, he could pretend like he’d walk out of the building and find the flat fields and flatter accents of Michigan, like the biggest thing he’d have to worry about would be his history paper.

They step onto the ice and the illusion is shattered, ten thousand people shouting their names and waving their flag. Neither of them are starting the game, and over at the bench, Auston strips a glove off, cups Jack’s neck for a bare second.

Jack drops his own glove and they lace fingers, down at their sides, discreet , where nobody can see.

Auston squeezes, just once.

The anthem plays.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this one was... kinda weird? What can you do. Praying that players do get to go to the Olympics and that we get to see some of our #youngguns there.
> 
> Obvs, this is fiction and though I read some real old articles, I made a lot of stuff up. I also don't hate Canadians.


End file.
